1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for displaying an online manual of a program for supporting routinized maintenance manipulations and control manipulations in a storage system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With conventional online manuals, a portion of the manual is displayed when the corresponding application program is executed, and such functions as indices, movement to the next page, and page return are provided. Those manuals do not relate to the execution itself of the application program. Even when an on-line manual is referred to at any procedure, the initial menu picture of the manual is always displayed first. The manual is manipulated in such a manner that a jump is made from the initial menu picture to a portion to be referred to.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei. 8-212161 entitled xe2x80x9cBusiness Manual Making Support Systemxe2x80x9d as an example of such manuals, a means for storing explanatory sentences of business specification information and a business manual in a system. A means is proposed that displays particular manual information from a particular picture by adding, to each of the explanatory sentences of the business specification information, information indicating a menu item on the screen in response to selection of which each of the explanatory sentences should be displayed.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei. 5-298045 entitled xe2x80x9cHyper Media Help Systemxe2x80x9d proposes, for hyper media that are linked to each other via hyper links, a system in which an inference means outputs a help message suitable for a manipulation state using a knowledge base when an instruction to display a help message is made.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei. 10-21037 entitled xe2x80x9cAuto-help Systemxe2x80x9d proposes a system that determines a proper help item based on an input command and history information and extracts and displays help information by searching an online manual.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei. 7-249033 entitled xe2x80x9cManipulation Help Execution Apparatusxe2x80x9d proposes a method that judges a manipulation state in response to an input manipulation, issues a command based on the manipulation state, and performs an adaptive help function.
In the above conventional online manuals, when an operator who is not familiar with manipulations or when an operator uses a function first, it is difficult to find a proper statement in referring to a manual description relating to a manipulation unless he knows the configuration and the contents of the manual.
Specifically, in the method of the publication No. Hei. 8-212161, it is necessary to a dictionary that is dedicated to the system based on an existing manual for each application system and store the generated dictionary.
In the method of the publication No. Hei. 5-298045, since a state is judged by the inference means and then a message is selected, the operation is indecisive. Therefore, this method is not suitable for a program for maintaining and controlling a storage system that supports routine work that is performed based on a manual or a manipulation procedure document that has been read many times.
In the method of the publication No. Hei. 10-21037, a displayed content of an online manual for the same manipulation may vary depending on the manner of selection from extracted help items. Therefore, this method is not suitable for a program for maintaining and controlling a storage system that supports routine work that is performed based on a manual or a manipulation procedure document that has been read many times.
In the method of the publication No. Hei. 7-249033, the apparatus operates in response to a manual input of an operator. Therefore, when a manipulation unit transition occurs with no input manipulation, that is, when a computer receives a state notice (e.g., occurrence of an abnormality in a storage system) from a storage system, this method cannot cope with, for example, a case of displaying a description relating to the abnormality in a manual or a manipulation procedure document. Further, being of such a type that a manipulation help execution apparatus is incorporated in a system, this method is not suitable for a case where a common method deals with a plurality of applications.
To solve the above problems, according to the present invention, a process of issuing a state transition message in response to a transfer from one procedure to another to monitor a state transition between manipulation procedures and device state notices is buried in a program that defines a process of an application, whereby a transition state between manipulation procedures is managed at each time point as the application is executed. A mechanism of determining a related page of a manipulation procedure document based on a transition state between manipulation procedures at a time point of online manual display and instructing a viewer tool (for displaying a manipulation procedure document) to display the determined page is also incorporated in the program. Further, at a time point of online manual display, information indicating a corresponding relationship between the version of the manual to be displayed and the version of the program is referred to. If they do not conform to each other, a proper version of the manual concerned is downloaded from a storage site of the manual over the Internet. This enables display of a manual that is not installed in the computer originally.